Hurt Locker: Iraqi Explosive Ordnance Disposal Hits the Big Screen

Though improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are the trademark weapon of the Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies, the experiences of those tasked with defusing them are not well known. Their stories are what prompted director Kathryn Bigelow to film The Hurt Locker, a fictional account of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team at the end of its 2004 rotation through Iraq. PM's Digital Hollywood got to sit down with Bigelow, along with Capt. Robert Busseau, an EOD operations officer, and actor Jeremy Renner to discuss the making of—and the tech behind—the new movie.

Director Kathryn Bigelow—whose action flick Point Break inspired both a live stage show and a portion of the Brit cop comedy Hot Fuzz—is back in theaters with The Hurt Locker, her first film since 2002's K-19: The Widowmaker. Based on a script by Marc Boal, about a journalist embedded with Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams in Iraq in 2004, Bigelow filmed Hurt Locker during the red-hot Jordanian summer to create what she calls a "fictional but faithful" depiction of EOD teams.

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POPULAR MECHANICS: What made you want to direct The Hurt Locker?

KATHRYN BIGELOW: When Marc went to Iraq and performed an embed with the bomb squad, he came back with these extraordinary stories and observations. I thought it would make a pretty interesting movie, especially looking at the psychology and heroism of these men who, I think, have the most dangerous job in the world. And then, to take that even further with a character like Sgt. James, who combines a sort of bravado and swagger with a really profound skill set and heroism—I thought it was an extraordinary set of characters and a canvas on which to make a film.

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PM: How important was it to you that the actors go and train?

BIGELOW: Extremely important. This is a conflict that I—and maybe this is an inaccurate generalization—but I think it's fairly opaque to the general public. The idea of IEDS, roadside bombs, EOD and exactly how they operate and what they do, and the fact that bombs are the signature of this particular insurgency. This is not a conflict like previous conflicts—like air-to-ground or ground-to-ground. So I felt that since what these bomb techs actually do, day in and day out, is very specialized and unique, it was very important to (a) be very accurate and authentic and (b) do as much research as possible. The opportunity that Marc provided with his embed and his observations was to make a very accurate reportorial movie, to give an audience a firsthand look at a day in the life of a bomb tech. So it was very important to do as much research as possible.

PM: Were you there when the actors were training?

BIGELOW: I was there prior to their sort-of boot camp, listening, spending time with EOD. I spent time with the EOD techs at Fort Irwin in California and then also with EOD techs at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, conducting my own private embed, let's say. But it was incredibly helpful because this is, again, I think, an aspect to the conflict that is fairly opaque to the general public.

PM: Did you have any bomb technicians on set with you?

BIGELOW: We actually had quite a few military, some had spent time in EOD, some had just spent their tours of duty in Iraq and around Baghdad, so we always had some military advising us and on set every day. It was a very well-observed, well-researched production.

PM: Did they point you in the direction of which sorts of IEDs are used, or how they're typically constructed?

BIGELOW: It all came from Marc's embed in baghdad. He spent time with the bomb squad and came up-close and personal with the 155s and the various ordnance of choice for the insurgency at that time. The conflict is constantly changing, so [the film is] specific to 2004. When he came back and began work on the script and we both began further research here, we decided to hire a special-effects coordinator, Richard Stutzman, for the film. He builds IEDs for the military bases to train with, so he had tremendous desire as well to be as accurate as possible. At every juncture, we were looking for accuracy—and yet, at the same time, we're still making a movie. It's not a documentary. It's fictional, but faithful.

PM: In the movie, Jeremy Renner wore a suit that all EOD team leaders wear when disarming an IED. Was the version you used on the film modified at all from what EOD uses?

BIGELOW: No, it was the exact same one that he trained in. The EOD squad leader at Fort Irwin told me this is how he tasks all of his technicians at the beginning: He puts you in the suit—which is incredibly heavy, anywhere between 80 to 100 pounds—and gives you a pile of paper clips. Then he tasks you to, one by one, move those paperclips from one pile to another pile. So not only are you learning the capabilities and limitations of the suit, but you're comfortable with the minutiae of that action, which is not dissimilar from the concentration that it may take—although certainly without the pressure—to disarm a bomb.

PM: What was it like filming in Jordan?

BIGELOW: It was an incredible place to shoot the film. My feeling, of course, was to get as close to the war zone as possible—I would have shot in Iraq if it had been feasible. But nonetheless, we were in and around the city of Amman, and at some points were within 3 miles of the Iraqi border. We were very close. That gave us the architecture, and the landscape enabled me to shoot 360 degrees.

The protocol for bomb disarmament is approximately 300-meter containment. The ground troops literally stop the war for about a 300-meter diameter around the suspicious rubble pile, or a wire sticking up out of the ground, or a newly paved section of asphalt. So geography was critical. It was very important to convey to the audience what the bomb technician actually does. The war is stopped for him, and he takes this incredibly lonely walk. So you have to have this sense—the audience needs to know you have up-range, downrange, and how close you are 100 meters, 50 meters, 25 meters, to the suspicious object. I needed a location in which we could really kind of have a tremendous amount of flexibility to go at any elevation, high, low, tight, wide, to convey geography to the audience. The design of the whole piece was intended as an opportunity to give the audience a raw, visceral, immediate look at the conflict in Iraq from the standpoint of the bomb technician, who is at the center of the conflict.

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PM: Why did you choose to shoot with four cameras at the same time? What sort of challenges did that pose?

BIGELOW: I think it was actually not challenging at all, it was kind of exciting and exhilarating. And once the actor got used to the surprise of the camera—or absence of a camera where you think one might be—then suddenly there's maybe a total immersion and a kind of purity to that experience. So rather than give a particular segment of that scene a particular nuance for that particular kind of camera lens, you're actually performing a bomb disarmament from beginning to end, and the cameras are there catching that bomb disarmament. It's a slightly different approach, and I think what happened here, it allowed the piece to garner more authenticity and be even more real and more honest.

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One of the biggest challenges was shooting in the Middle East, in the summer, in the heat, and making sure that Jeremy— in the suit, in the Middle East, in the summer, in the heat—was comfortable. This meant making the time within the suit short. That was probably the biggest logistical challenge—protecting Jeremy's stamina. It was punishing, but he's really, truly, in my opinion, an extraordinary actor, and gave 100,000 percent of himself.

In The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow directs Jeremy Renner as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team leader. Popular Mechanics talks real-life training and tech with Capt. Robert Busseau, an EOD operations officer for the Army's 20th Support Command. He has been in EOD for 10 years.

POPULAR MECHANICS: How many people are on an EOD team?

CAPT. ROBERT BUSSEAU: A doctoral EOD team has between two and three people. We're going through a modernization of the units right now, from two-man teams to three-man teams. We used to have seven teams in a company. Five of those would have two guys, and the heavy teams would have three personnel. It gives you more lift capacity, more guys to carry equipment and do more functions.

PM: Who wears the bomb suit?

BUSSEAU: Typically an E6 [staff sergeant] is the primary operator on the team, and he is in the process of training the two junior soldiers to be EOD team leaders. When you're talking about an IED (improvised explosive device) mission, you're most likely going to see the team leader doing all the high-hazard things. He is your expert.

PM: What's the suit made of, and what kind of blast can it withstand?

BUSSEAU: A bomb suit weighs about 85 to 90 pounds. And that bag you put it in is designed to be a backpack. There are several different models. The one they wore [in Hurt Locker] was probably the EOD9, one of the heaviest protection suits. It's a Kevlar wool and polymer mix, and integrated into it is a back brace in case you do get injured—it supports your spine as you get [evacuated]. It has hardened Kevlar chest plates, and woven inside the entire suit is a flexible polymer Kevlar blend—like a typical bulletproof vest. The suit has a fan behind the face shield. It doesn't cool you off, just clears the fog from the visor, which is ¾-inch polymer.

PM: What size blast can one of these suits withstand?

BUSSEAU: We've blast-tested our smaller suit with 5 kilograms of C-4 at 3 meters. Set in the middle of your car, detonated, that would roll back your roof, blow out all the windows and doors and likely kill everybody inside. Your car would look like a little flower. A 155-mm shell [the primary ordnance used in Hurt Locker] probably has somewhere between 20 and 35 pounds of high explosives in it.

With this bomb suit on, if a 155-mm were to detonate and you were standing on top of it, you would probably be killed. If you were 5 feet away you probably wouldn't be. Distance matters a lot. Your hands stick out of the suit. There are protective gloves, but they typically get in the way, so they're not always worn. So you have to tuck your hands in behind the protection fast enough. Explosive waves go 29,000 feet/second, so there's not a lot of time to react. And explosives push the air out and increase the pressure. So if there's too much pressure, no matter how much protection you have on, it will still squeeze you, and it can be very damaging to your internal organs. The stuff hitting you is just part of the threat. That bomb suit will keep you from losing your eye, from getting a piece of fragmentation in your heart.

PM: How does temperature impact the situation?

BUSSEAU: Pretty much anything you put over your face makes you 10 percent stupider—a gas mask, a protective mask even more so. The Army has done testing on our chemical protective suits, and they raise your temperature about 15 degrees internally.

PM: Are there any techniques you use to keep your concentration?

BUSSEAU: The more time you spend in the suit, the more comfortable you get with it, and the more used to operating the equipment you get. That just improves how you do it. You train under the worst conditions—when it's hot—so that way you're used to it.

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PM: In the movie, the EOD team is dealing mostly with 155-mm projectiles. What sort of IEDs are EOD teams dealing with over there?

BUSSEAU: IEDs are left to the bomber's imagination. What you're talking about in the case of a 155 is somebody picked up an abandoned piece of ordnance and just made it so it will detonate under their control. Anything that has a signal can be turned into an IED, whether it's a clothespin, whether it's a wire. You're turning your car on, there's power going somewhere, and you just have to know when to plug the power into the explosives.

PM: Do EOD techs disarm all the bombs they come across?

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BUSSEAU: Our biggest goal is the protection of personnel and property. If we can make it so [the bomb] will safely not detonate, that would be our first goal. If that's not possible, we want to control when [the IED] detonates so we can clear the area and make it a safer environment.

PM: How do you determine if someone is a good candidate for EOD?

BUSSEAU: We have a pretty intense screening process. We put everybody in a bomb suit for a half an hour and make them do certain physical tasks: picking up 155s and carrying it 300 meters, running 300 meters, push-ups, jumping jacks. Basically what we're trying to do is check if they're claustrophobic, and see what do they do if they get stressed—because if they panic we don't want them in the field. If you're doing push-ups and you can't count, there's an issue. If you can't do three times three, there's an issue. You're obviously too overwhelmed. When soldiers are getting assessed they're in these suits for half an hour. In Iraq, they could be in the suits for 10 hours.

PM: What does EOD school entail besides training in the suit?

BUSSEAU: We don't just say, "Congratulations, you got a job. Go take care of that IED." You spend 10 months in school learning how to do it. Soldiers go over the basics on how to identify IEDs and how they function—you have to know how they work to make them not work. But the most important thing is, if you don't know what it is, you don't touch it. We have robots. We have very good protective bomb suits and vehicles. The equipment is really good. There is no reason to put your meaty body at risk. It is a very safe job.

The key to being a good EOD tech is the training, and we try and build a lot of experience. We don't want guys walking up to explosives and cutting wires. That's inherently dangerous. You know the red-wire green-wire thing they like to show on TV? First of all, bomb makers aren't going to use red wire and green wire. They're going to use whatever wire they have. That is why junior soldiers go out with the team leader to learn before they develop into team leaders.

PM: How many people finish EOD school?

BUSSEAU: If we assess 18 people, maybe three go to EOD school. And of those three, or maybe two, make it.

PM: How close do you think the movie gets to portraying EOD teams?

BUSSEAU: It sounds like it went a little more Hollywood. It's understandable because you want to sell tickets. Just watching the trailers—how soldiers react to shooting at people, walking down the street shooting ... that's insane. We're more paranoid on the safety side. You don't want to stand up and shoot anybody. You want to hide behind something and shoot at people. You want to use your robots, you want to use your bomb suit, you want to use your vehicles.

I like to tell people that it's a good movie to take a date out to—somebody you meet at the bar—but it's probably not the best movie to let your spouse see. The EOD guys do have an air of confidence; sometimes it comes off as cockiness. And you don't want to paint the picture to your family that that's what you do. They'll be scared every time you go out the door. In the movie Blown Away, there was one image of EOD techs cutting open IEDs with their bare hands and cutting wires. You don't want your family to think that's what you're doing. It's much safer than that.

In The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner plays Sgt. William James, a cocky Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team leader. The actor sat down with PM to discuss his respect for EOD tech, his love of weaponry and that bulky bomb suit.

POPULAR MECHANICS: What kind of training did you do to prep for your role as Sgt. James?

JEREMY RENNER: I trained with some guys at Fort Irwin, who put me through a test. First a physical test, and then they do a mental aptitude test. They put you in the suit and show you how to work the controls. The suit weighs about 100 pounds, and it's as cumbersome as it looks. Just getting up and down is very tough. I remember when I first put it on, I was like, "oh, this isn't as bad as i thought!" I was doing jumping jacks like an a***hole, thinking I was cool. And then 20 minutes later I wanted to kill myself. For the first task, they put a stack of 50 or 100 paper clips on the ground. I had to get on the ground, pick one up, walk 15 feet, get on the ground, and put it down. It seems so trivial, but that exhausted me. Then there's a robot, it weighs a couple hundred pounds, a lot of times they break down, so you have to drag that 300 yards, there's an artillery round that weighs 50 pounds, you have to pick that up and walk 100 yards.

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After all the physical tasks you do you take off the suit and you're drenched, and you do simple division. They're like, ok, seven into 49! And I'm thinking. Just thinking. Basic math becomes very difficult, because you lose 25 or 30 IQ points just by being in the suit for a certain amount of time. It's pretty crazy.

PM: What was the point of making you do math after all the physical stuff?

RENNER: Because you have to keep your wits about you. EOD is all mental. I mean, some of the guys I saw when I was training—one of them was a monster-football-looking guy, in great shape. Another guy that's done three tours has a big old belly, really frumpy. I don't know how he fit in the suit. So the physical part of it is really not so much as the mental strength and the focus that someone has to have. Doing the math is to see how mentally tough you are, because it'll push you to your limits.

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PM: What was the toughest part of wearing the suit?

RENNER: Knowing that I had to put it on. Once I had it on, it was fine, and then taking it off—that was the best part. It takes a little bit of time, two guys help you put it on, so I just kind of stood there like a mannequin and they dress me.

PM: You guys filmed in Jordan during the summer. What was it like being inside the suit in the heat?

RENNER: Fort Irwin is in the desert, and it was pretty hot there when i was training—106 F there. In Jordan, it was 125 F. At that temperature alone, just in anything, is awful, and then with the suit—at least once I got the suit on, I knew I wasn't going to get any hotter. That was the one thing I liked about it, because everyone else was doing this slow roast, like a chicken rotisserie or something, out in the sun, just kind of baking and roasting, and you don't know when your breaking point is. In the suit, your breaking point happens right away. You sweat, you're drenched, it doesn't get any worse than that.

PM: Any differences between the suit you trained in and the one you wore on set?

RENNER: The one I wore in the movie was a better version of what I trained in, mostly because of the helmet. The one I trained in was a beat-up thing, completely scratched. But otherwise the suit was pretty much the same. And [director] Kathryn [Bigelow] was very adamant about me using real Kevlar, so everything about it was real.

PM: How long did you spend on base, training?

RENNER: Probably a total of about a week on base, and then I spent some time with the guys, and then weaponry.

PM: Did you get interested in bomb making?

RENNER: Absolutely. That's part of their training. When I was training with these guys at Fort Irwin, that's all they were doing. There's literally a shop of ten dudes making bombs. That's all they did. You have to learn how to make them in order to disassemble them, right? So you learn the ins and outs of every part, and I didn't get so much into the building of it—I didn't have time to do all of that—but I did get into some of the basics of C-4 and what it can do.

PM: What was it like training with EOD teams? What were they like?

RENNER: They're very different from most military guys that I know because ... I don't want to say that they're nerds, but they're brainy, they're smart, they're really mentally intense. Kind of quiet and reserved, very kind, kind guys. In the military, they were very professional about their jobs. I'd ask a lot of questions, and they'd say, "that's top secret," "no, sir," "yes, sir," and then outside of the base, and get a few drinks in them, and you've got a human being there, they're not just training you. And that's where I got a lot of jokes and pranks and what their lives are like, and what EOD guys do afterwards. A lot of them become civil servants and teachers, things like that. I got a lot more out of having a beer with a guys versus learning all the technical aspects of it, because it was confusing. Everything in the military is an acronym of something. ROV (remotely operated vehicle), EOD, IED (improved explosive device), and I'm like, trying to write this all down and I'm so confused. But then I talked to them over a beer, and they're talking about, oh, when we're back on base and somebody passes out with their boots on, it means free game. We can do anything we want to them, we can hang them from a tree if they're drunk, or whatever. So it's just sort of interesting, character things that makes them human, and not just these guys that I have so much respect for.

PM: Did you feel an increased sense of responsibility since you're portraying people who are over there in a current conflict?

RENNER: Oh, yeah. I felt very responsible for being as accurate as we possibly could. I mean, I would call the guys while I was shooting in Jordan and I'd be like, I have some cord here, but it's not attached to the thing, and I don't know where the blaster tab is. I was not in any position to know all the things I needed to know, even though I had trained a bit. It was important to Kathryn, and to (screenwriter) Marc Boal, and myself, to be as accurate as we possibly could. Obviously there were some dramatic things—it is a movie, it was made to entertain. But we made it as accurate as we could with what we were given.